| Colonial Mischief: 96 years on, Balfour Declaration still impacting Palestinians!

Balfour, A Promise Of Bloodshed And Massacres ~ Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News.

It was a day like this day, 96 years ago, on November 2, 1917, when Britain decided to shift away its “problem”, and promise the Jews a homeland in Palestine. The Arab land that was under cruel and violent British occupation.

Britain was not trying to be good to the Jews, but surely managed to look good doing it.

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Back then, the Jews have been facing some of the ugliest forms of cruelty, racism and hatred, in Europe, especially in the Britain that calls itself the Great.

Britain decided to grant the Jews a homeland in Palestine, a homeland that Britain did not own, a land that Britain ruled by force, by military might, and by massacres and crimes.

Nevertheless, why not, Britain thought, “if we give the Jews this gift”, and grant them a homeland in Palestine, we will “be doing something great, we will be granting the Jews a country of their own”, and at the same time we will be getting rid of this problem instead of dealing with racism and antisemitism, and ending it.

Therefore, British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, made his infamous promise, infamous declaration to the grant the Jews a homeland in Palestine.

Balfour sent the letter to Baron Walter Rothschild, “the second Baron of the UK and Ireland”, and senior leaders of the Jewish Community in Britain, promising to grant the land of Palestine to the Jewish people.

A land that Britain never owned, a land inhabited by the indigenous Arab Palestinian population, a land that had great culture, wealth, and of course religious significance to all three faiths.

The wrong notion Zionists convey, and the facts they twist, especially when they say the Jews needed a homeland because of what they faced during the holocaust, crumbles when you realize that the declaration was made in 1917.

That is before massive murderer, criminal and annihilator, Adolf Hitler, rose to power and started his massacres against the Jews, and against anybody who opposed him.

Racism and antisemitism in Europe back then, made someone like Hitler rise to power and commit his ugly crimes against the Jewish nation.

After all, Jews were demonized, considered the problem, considered evil, as if they were a nation that worships the devil and implements his plans.

While facing all sorts of hatred and racism in Europe, way before the holocaust took place, Jews in the Arab world, Jews in Palestine, were living with as next-door neighbors to Arab Muslims and Christians.

But the Zionist movement did not want that, Zionists wanted the Arabs and the Palestinians out, wanted to use the suffering of the Jews, due to racism and antisemitism in Europe, to commit ugly war crimes, annihilation and forcible transfer of the indigenous Palestinian population to create a Zionist state.

Zionism and racism are nothing but sisters, accomplices in crime, they believe in the superiority of one nation, and inferiority of another, and many other nations.

That is why Zionist leaders never looked at the indigenous Palestinian population as people, and human beings living in their own homeland, and just wanted them killed and removed, dehumanized and just “gone”.

The Palestinians became a nation of refugees, displaced people, living under constant attacks and abuse by the Israeli occupation, while millions are living as refugees in various refugee camps in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and abroad.

An entire nation that once had trade, agriculture, and rich culture, is now being denied its very own right, the right to live in its homeland as a free nation, as a sovereign and an independent nation.

The massive massacres against the Palestinians were intensified just before and during the establishment of Israel, and continued after that, continued to this very day, but the assault openly came into light after the First Zionist Conference, in Basel – Switzerland, in 1897.

Back then, Theodor Hertzel became known as the father of the so-called “Modern Political Zionism” that determined the urgency of getting rid of the indigenous population of Palestine, in order to establish a Jewish State on its ruins, and on the lands that were once owned by the Palestinians.

It is not a secret that Hertzel was angered and annoyed by rich Jewish families that did not want to fund his plans, and by Palestinian Jews who actually left Palestine because they did not want to be part of the crime.

The Zionist conference came up with several agendas topped by the need to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine, by all means.

To achieve this ultimate goal, the conference called for encouraging Jewish immigration into Palestine, organizing the Jews and connecting them with the Zionist movement, and achieving international legitimacy for the Zionist agenda.

The conference then decided to form the “International Zionist Federation”, headed by Theodor Hertzel.

It also decided to form the Executive Branch of the Jewish Agency to implement the resolutions and to be in charge of collecting money to use in “purchasing lands”, and sending Jewish immigrants to start establishing settlements and colonies on lands that were owned by the indigenous Palestinian population.

After its establishment, the Zionist Federation decided to act on the implementation of a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine, an issue that came into light with the occupation of Palestine in 1948, and the establishment of the state of Israel. After ongoing attacks and violent assaults against the Palestinians and their lands.

The promise Balfour made was an important step towards fulfilling the resolutions of the Zionist Conference, his promise came to grant “legitimacy” for raping the land of Palestine, and displacing its people.

Balfour and his government wanted to look good, wanted to claim they cared for the Jews, wanted to give them a homeland in a country he and his country never owned, this way he can ensure continued control over Palestine, while at the same time looking as the man who gave a homeland to the Jews.

Hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns were wiped out, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced, lost their homes and lands, so that a state can be established, a state that defines itself as the state of the Jewish people, as a state that regards the indigenous Arabs and Palestinians as a strategic threat.

Throughout the years, leaders of the Zionist movement were frank about their plans, clearly knew that Palestine is a land inhabited by its indigenous population, and knew that their plans would be massive depopulation, murder and massacres.

— Some Zionist quotes showing the colonial and racist mentality of the Zionist movement that wanted Palestine to be transformed into a sole Jewish State, Jewish in name Zionist in nature, colonial and hatred-filled ideology.

“We came here to a country that was populated by Arabs and we are building here a Hebrew, a Jewish state; instead of the Arab villages, Jewish villages were established. You even do not know the names of those villages, and I do not blame you because these villages no longer exist. There is not a single Jewish settlement that was not established in the place of a former Arab Village.” ¬ Moshe Dyan, March 19, 1969, speech at the Technion in Haifa, quoted in Ha’aretz, April 4, 1969.

“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … Politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country.” — David Ben Gurion, quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s “Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.

“We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question, What is to be done with the Palestinian population?’ Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said ‘Drive them out!” — Yitzhak Rabin, leaked censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times, 23 October 1979.

“We must do everything to ensure they (the Palestinian refugees) never do return” David Ben-Gurion, in his diary, 18 July 1948, quoted in Michael Bar Zohar’s Ben-Gurion: the Armed Prophet, Prentice-Hall, 1967, p. 157.
“Everybody has to move, run and grab as many hilltops as they can to enlarge the settlements because everything we take now will stay ours… Everything we don’t grab will go to them.” Ariel Sharon, Israeli Foreign Minister, addressing a meeting of militants from the extreme right wing Tsomet Party, Agence France Presse, November 15, 1998.

“We must expropriate gently the private property on the state assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country. The property owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discretely and circumspectly. Let the owners of the immoveable property believe that they are cheating us, selling us things for more than they are worth. But we are not going to sell them anything back.” – Theodore Herzl, June 12 1895)

This conflict, created by Zionists and colonialist, leading to this ongoing bloodshed, massacres, and forcible transfer cannot be resolved without acknowledging the crimes committed against the Palestinians, without recognizing their legitimate rights, stolen from them.

If we are to create an everlasting peace in the land of Palestine, peace that can build a better future for Jews and Arabs, we need to achieve justice first, peace without justice is just a shame, a lie that cannot survive long, and will be crumbling down.

The Palestinians lost more than %78 of their historic land when Israel was created in Palestine, and now are losing their lands again for illegal, illegitimate, Jewish-only colonies, on privately-owned Palestinian lands, are losing their lands due to the illegal apartheid wall, and so-called “security zones” around it.

Villagers who prospered by tending, planting and harvesting their lands, are not unable to access what is left of their lands, are denied their legitimate right to enter their lands, are losing their homes due to illegal collective punishment policies that led to the destruction of dozens of thousands of homes.

Millions of trees cut and uprooted by the colonial Israeli occupation under different pretenses and “justifications”.

But the Palestinians are defending their homeland, defending their right to exist and to establish their own state. Not a miniature state, but a free, sovereign and independent country.

 palestine | refugees/immigration | opinion/analysis  saed at imemc dot org

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| The “De-Zionization” of Israel: Drying up Ideological Wellsprings of Arab – Israeli Conflict!

The “De-Zionization” of Israel: Drying up Ideological Wellsprings of Arab – Israeli Conflict ~ Nicola Nasser, Global Research.

Gradually, awareness That de-Zionization of the U.S. and European foreign policy as well as the internal policies of the State of Israel HAS Become a prerequisite for peace in the Middle East is Steadily taking roots in Israeli and world public opinion and consciousness.

HOWEVER this awareness HAS yet to wait for drying up the Zionist Ideological wellsprings of the Arab – Israeli conflict and translating it into real politics by de-Zionization of Israel and Western foreign policy disengaging from icts Ideological attachment to Zionism.

In His Article published by Foreign Policy on October 25 last, James Traub quoted U.S. President Barack Obama in a speech last May, ” Announcing a reformulation of the war on terror, “as saying:” We cannot use strength everywhere That a radical ideology takes root, “the only alternative to” perpetual war “is a sustained endeavor to Reduce” the wellsprings of extremism. “

The “wellsprings” of “perpetual wars” and “extremism” in the Middle East falling on MOST of the past twentieth century up to now Could Easily be detected in the unholy combination of real politics and the “radical ideology” of the secular – turned – religious Zionism.

This combination made it possible, and seemingly ethical for Americans and Europeans to accept and justify the unethical displacement of the indigenous Arab people of Palestine to be mittal by a multi-national artificial gathering of Jews Have you Suffered oppression, anti – Semitism, pogroms and holocaust in Their western home countries.

U.S. and European Continued attachment to the Zionist ideology lies at the heart of Their treatment of Israel, the offspring of this ideology, as one of Their top “vital interests” in the Middle East, All which is an attachment That in turn lies at the heart of anti-Americanism and other forms of Arab conflicts with the “west.”

The safe haven of the “new world” in America was a Timely and practical solution for Europeans to get rid of and solve Their “Jewish Question,” it now Absorbs more Jews than Israel does.

The communists offert Their own solution, it materialized in the Jewish autonomous “Oblast” first ever republic in the Russian Birobidzhan, close to the border of the form Soviet Union with China, All which was home to some three million Jews before some one third of Them immigrated to Israel Following the collapse of the communist empire.

The nation states basing citizenship on the rule of law is now the rule of the day in Europe, Where Jews enjoy full constitutional religious, civil, political and all the other rights enjoyed by Their compatriots.

There is no more a “Jewish Question” in Europe in Particular gold in the west in general. Such a question if there still Persists it is one related to the disproportionation of Jewish Citizens impact on the decision makers in the political, financial and media arenas.

Nonetheless, the Zionist propaganda in Israel and abroad is still fervently inciting That Jews are an endangered species outside Israel, soliciting Jewish immigration, dual citizenship and binational Encouraging loyalty and Among Them Considering all Jews outside Israel as “Refugees.”

Writing in the http://www.huffingtonpost.com on September 6 last year, Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian Elected, quoted Shlomo Hillel, a government minister and an active Zionist from Iraq, as saying, “I do not regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as That of Refugees. They came here Because They wanted to, as Zionists “and quoted Former Knesset member Ran Cohen, Have you immigrated from Iraq, as saying:” I have to say: I am not a refugee. I came at the behest of Zionism. “

Consequently, the “Jewish Question” Moved ironically to the very Arab safe haven to All which the oppressed European Jews Fled With Their lives to survive the inquisition of Culture in Medieval Europe. Among the large largest Jewish minority Arabs in Morocco nowadays tells the story.

This Arab safe haven was turned by the Zionist ideology into a hell of wars, instability, conflict and Ongoing home of a revived “Jewish Question” since Israel was artificially created 65 years ago in the heart of the Arab world, Where Jews Previously used to be a prosperous minority in every one of the capitals of the 22 Arab states except Jordan.

Zionism justified the establishment of Israel in Palestine by controversial two basic arguments: That God promised the land to Jews no matter what Would Happen to icts Arab Inhabitants Have you was there long before Joshua and his army crossed Jordan River to Jericho destroy and kill every man, woman, child and animal by “God’s command.”

On November 2, 1917, then British Foreign Secretary, Lord Balfour, ACTED as the self – appointed messenger of God’s will to end a modern God’s promise to Jews to Have a “homeland” in Palestine.

The modern justification of the Holocaust Does not care That Reviews another people derived, namely Arab Palestinians, pay the price for a crime They Did not commit.

Ironic but informative as well is the fact That Zionism was not originally a Jewish product.

According to t he author of “Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon?” (InterVarsity Press, 2004) Revd. Dr. Stephen Sizer, writing in the Middle East Monitor on August 1 last, ” The origins of the movement can be traced to the early 19th century When a group of eccentric British Christian leaders Began to lobby for Jewish restoration to Palestine as a precondition Necessary for the return of Christ … Christian Zionism Jewish Zionism therefore Preceded by more than 50 years. Some of Theodore Herzl’s Strongest advocates Were Christian clergy. ” Dr. Sizer headlined His article, “Christian Zionism: The Heresy That Undermines Middle East Peace.”

He, together with the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem: The Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, Archbishop Swerios Malki Mourad of the Syrian Orthodox, the Episcopal Church Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal and the Evangelical Lutheran Church Bishop Munib Younan Issued in 2006 and signed the Jerusalem Declaration on Christian Zionism, All which Concluded: “We categorically reject Christian Zionist doctrines as a false teaching That corrupts the biblical messages of love, justice and reconciliation.”

The Zionist narrative was challenged by Israel ‘s Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe “New Historians.”‘, Avi Shlaim, Tom Segev, Hillel Cohen, Baruch Kimmerling and others Have Already reconsidered and created a post – Zionists’ awareness. Pappe ‘Concluded That The Zionist leaders Planned and Executed “ethnic cleansing” to displace MOST of the Arab Palestinians.

Shlomo Sand’s trilogy – “The Invention of the Jewish People,” “The Invention of the Land of Israel” and his upcoming third volume of “The Invention of the Secular Jew” – hard hits at the very foundations of Zionism.

The fact That the secular Zionism was not popular Among the religious world Jewry in the early stages of the movement and That It is an ideology still Opposed by a strong Jewish minority is a fact Zionists are keen to smokescreen.

“The UN avenue” in Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv was renamed “The Zionism Avenue” in response to the adoption by the United Nations  General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution of 3379 on November 10, 1975 All which Determined That ” Zionism  is a form of  racism  and racial discrimination, “it was Revoked by the UNGA resolution 46/86 in 1991 The ongoing Israeli Zionist ideology and practices render its repeal a premature step That should be reconsidering reinstating it.

The world community as Represented by the United Nations, by Resolution 181 of 1947 Adopting dividing Palestine betweens icts indigenous Arab Palestinians and the invading aliens of the Zionist settlers played in the hands of Christian and Jewish Zionism to commit an historical mistake That doomed peace in the Middle East as an elusive Humanitarian hope for a long time to come.

Jews Were an integral portion of the area’s history and social fabric up to this fact Zionism cut short.Only the prerequisite of de-Zionization of Israel and world politics Will Make That Would peace a dream come true in the area and restore history to normal icts race in it. The Crusaders’ interruption of the regional history is an informative precedent from All Those pertaining concerned Could All which draw lessons.

* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

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| What Comes Next: A secular democratic state in historic Palestine – a promising land!

What Comes Next: A secular democratic state in historic Palestine – a promising land ~ Omar Barghouti,  Mondoweiss.

“Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the oppressed must not in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both.” [1]

–Paulo Freire

The ongoing, tumultuous popular upheavals in the Arab world are ushering in a new phase that may break the rusty but still formidable imperial and neoliberal fetters that have consciously, systemically, and structurally inhibited human development in the entire Arab region. In addition to its anticipated emancipatory impact on peoples across this region, this process of radical transformation promises to further the struggle for self determination and ethical decolonization in historic Palestine.

Decolonization should not be understood as a blunt and absolute reversal of colonization, putting us back under pre-colonial conditions and undoing whatever rights had been acquired to date. Instead, decolonization can be regarded as a negation of the aspects of colonialism that deny the rights of the colonized indigenous population and, as a byproduct, dehumanize the colonizers themselves.

A secular, democratic unitary state in historic Palestine (in its British Mandate borders) is the most just and morally coherent solution to this century-old colonial conflict, primarily because it offers the greatest hope for reconciling the ostensibly irreconcilable — the inalienable rights of the indigenous Palestinian people, particularly the right to self-determination, and the acquired rights of the indigenized former colonial settlers to live in peace and security, individually and collectively, after ridding them of their colonial privileges.

Morality and legality aside, Israel has adopted a strategy of “territorial seizure and apartheid,” as the publisher of the Israeli daily Haaretz put it, [2] that obviates the practical possibility of implementing a two-state solution in line with a minimalist interpretation of relevant UN resolutions. Blinded by the arrogance of power and the ephemeral comfort of impunity afforded to it by the US-led West, Israel, against its own strategic Zionist interests, has failed to control its insatiable appetite for forcibly displacing more of the indigenous people of Palestine and for expanding its colonial control of their lands, undermining any real possibility for building a sovereign Palestinian state.

The fact that the single democratic state is morally and legally superior, however, does not necessarily make establishing it an easy task. It can only result from, among other factors, a long, intricate process of what I call ethical de-colonization, or de-Zionization, involving two simultaneous, dialectically related processes: reflection and action, or praxis. [3] Ethical decolonization anchored in international law and universal human rights is a profound process of transformation that requires, above everything else, a sophisticated, principled and popular Palestinian resistance movement with a clear vision for justice and a democratic, inclusive society, with equal rights for all, Palestinian refugees included. This resistance must include the growing ranks of anti-colonial Jewish-Israelis, just as the South African struggle against apartheid included anti-racist and principled whites. It is also premised on two other pillars, a democratized and free Arab region, which now looks considerably less imaginary, and an international solidarity movement supporting Palestinian rights and struggling to end all forms of Zionist apartheid and settler-colonial rule.

In parallel with the process of ending injustice and restoring basic Palestinian rights, and while oppressive relationships are being dismantled and colonial privileges done away with, a conscious and genuine process of challenging the dichotomy between the identity of the oppressed and that of the oppressor must simultaneously be nourished to build the conceptual foundations for ethical coexistence in the decolonized future state. Only then can the end of oppression give birth to a common, post-oppression identity that can truly make the equality between the indigenous Palestinians and the indigenized settlers as just, sustainable and peaceful as possible.

Among the most discussed paths to resolving the question of Palestine, the civic, democratic state solution lays out the clearest mechanism for ending the three-tiered regime of injustice that Palestinians have suffered under since 1948 when Israel was created as a settler-colony on the ruins of Palestinian society. The three tiers are the occupation and colonization of the Palestinian – and other Arab –territory occupied by Israel in 1967; the system of institutionalized and legalized racial discrimination,[4] or apartheid, to which the indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel are subjected to on account of being “non-Jews;” and the persistent denial of the intrinsic rights of the Palestine refugees, especially their right to return to their homes which was affirmed by UN resolution 194. An overwhelming majority of Palestinian civil society has identified [5] these rights as the minimal requirements for the Palestinian people to exercise its inalienable right to self-determination.

A two-state solution cannot adequately, if at all, address the second injustice or the third, the core of the question of Palestine. But what about the bi-national state concept?

Bi-nationalism, initially espoused by liberal Zionist intellectuals [6], assumes that Jews around the world form a nation and is consequently premised on a Jewish national right in Palestine, on par and to be reconciled with the nationalright of the indigenous, predominantly Arab population. Bi-nationalism today, despite its variations, still upholds this ahistorical and morally untenable national right of the colonial-settlers.

A bi-national state solution also cannot accommodate the right of return as stipulated in UNGA resolution 194, not to mention the fact that it infringes, by definition, the inalienable rights of the indigenous Palestinians on part of their homeland, particularly the right to self-determination. Recognizing national rights of Jewish settlers in Palestine or any part of it cannot but imply accepting the right of colonists to self-determination. Other than contradicting the very letter, spirit and purpose of the universal principle of self-determination primarily as a means for “peoples under colonial or alien domination or foreign occupation” to realize their rights [7], such a recognition of national rights for a colonial-settler community may, at one extreme, lead to claims for secession, or Jewish “national” sovereignty, on part of the land of Palestine, undermining Palestinian self-determination.

A Jewish state in Palestine (“a state of the Jewish nation”), no matter what shape it takes, is by definition exclusionary; it cannot but contravene the basic rights of the land’s indigenous Palestinian population and perpetuate a system of racial discrimination that ought to be opposed categorically. Any other exclusionary regime in Palestine that denies citizens some of their rights based on their identity — ethnic, religious, gender, sexual, etc. — must be rejected just as strongly.

Accepting modern-day Jewish Israelis as equal citizens and full partners in building and developing a new shared society, free from all colonial subjugation and discrimination, as called for in the democratic state model, is the most magnanimous — rational — offer any oppressed indigenous population can present to its oppressors. Only by shedding their colonial privileges, dismantling their structures of oppression, and accepting the restoration of the rights of the indigenous people of the land, especially the right of Palestinian refugees to return and to reparations and the right of all Palestinians to unmitigated equality, can settlers be indigenized and integrated into the emerging nation and therefore become entitled to participating in determining the future of the common state.

The indigenous population, on the other hand, must be ready, after justice had been reached and rights had been restored, to forgive and to accept the former settlers as equal citizens, enjoying normal lives — neither masters nor slaves. The above explained process of de-dichotomization at the identity and conceptual level, not just in the concrete reality, that must proceed in parallel to the realization of rights is the most important guarantor of minimizing the possibility of lingering hostility or, worse, a reversal of roles between oppressor and oppressed once justice and equal rights have prevailed. The ultimate goal should be justice, equality and ethical coexistence, not revenge.

As the One State Declaration [8], issued by several Palestinian, Israeli and international intellectuals and activists in 2008, states:

“The historic land of Palestine belongs to all who live in it and to those who were expelled or exiled from it since 1948, regardless of religion, ethnicity, national origin or current citizenship status.

“Any system of government must be founded on the principle of equality in civil, political, social and cultural rights for all citizens. Power must be exercised with rigorous impartiality on behalf of all people in the diversity of their identities; …”

In a future democratic state cultural particularity and diverse identities should be nourished, not just tolerated, by society and protected by law. Palestine was for centuries a fertile meeting ground for diverse civilizations and cultures, fostering communication, dialogue and acculturation among them. This heritage, almost forgotten under the cultural hegemony of Zionist colonial rule, must be revived and celebrated, regardless of any power asymmetry in the new state. We also must keep in mind that half of the Jewish-Israeli population, the Mizrahi/Arab Jews, have their cultural roots in Arab and other Middle Eastern cultures, making future coexistence even more likely.

While many Palestinians living in the occupied territories or in exile cannot entertain the idea of ever co-existing with Israelis in a post-colonial reality, mainly due to the current harsh conditions of Zionist racism, oppression and dispossession, most would agree that in the period that predated the Zionist conquest, when Jews were part of society, co-existence was ordinary. Unlike Europe, the history of Arab and Islamic civilizations does not include massacres or pogroms targeting the indigenous Jewish populations.  Indeed, Jewish culture reached a highpoint under Arab-Islamic rule in Andalusia. Co-existence after establishing justice, far from being an artificial, “imported” concept, would connect with deep roots in our own history.

Moral reconciliation between conflicting communities is impossible if the essence of the oppressive relationship between them is sustained. The objectively contradictory identities of the oppressor and oppressed cannot find a moral middle ground. So long as oppression continues to characterize the communities’ relationship only coercion, submission and injustice are possible outcomes. Reconciliation and coexistence, then, can only result from ethical decolonization.

It is fair to assume, however, that the colonizers will use what they have at their disposal to perpetuate their colonial privileges and thwart transformative change towards justice. Some analysts go as far as predicting that Israel would use its nuclear weapons, its “Samson Option,” rather than accept the dismantling of its Zionist apartheid regime. Even without such dramatic predictions, one can surmise that the colonial community in Palestine will not only circle the wagons, as it were, against any common threat to the oppressive order; it will also shed any pretence of democracy or supposed respect for human rights and commit unprecedented egregious crimes against the indigenous Palestinians to maintain the system of oppression.

As the price of resistance rises, so will scepticism, including among some Palestinians, about the very merit of the struggle for emancipation and justice. This practical consideration coupled with ethical principles should guide effective resistance to Zionist apartheid and inform its adherence at all times to the highest moral standards. Resistance and solidarity forms that adopt a rights-based approach, as in the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, provide a good example. Other than being the right thing to do per se, an ethically consistent struggle in line with international law and universal principles of human rights will encourage Jewish-Israelis to join in “co-resistance” which is the most assured path to ethical co-existence. [9]

By emphasizing equal humanity as its most fundamental principle, the secular democratic state promises to end the fundamental injustices that have plagued Palestine and, simultaneously, to transcend national and ethnic dichotomies that now make it nearly impossible to envision ethical coexistence in a decolonized Palestine, based on equality, justice and freedom—a truly promising land.

Omar Barghouti is a Palestinian human rights activist and independent researcher. He has advocated for the secular democratic state solution for more than three decades. This article reflects his personal analysis and does not represent the views of the BDS movement. This post is part of “What Comes Next?: A forum on the end of the two-state paradigm.” This series was initiated by Jewish Voice for Peace as an investigation into the current state of thinking about one state and two state solutions, and the collection has been further expanded by Mondoweiss to mark 20 years since the Oslo process. The entire series can be found here.

Notes

[1] Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum Books, 1993.

 [2] Amos Schocken, The necessary elimination of Israeli democracy, Haaretz, 25 November 2011.

 [3] Paulo Freire, ibid.

 [4] In its most recent session in Cape Town, South Africa, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine concluded that, “Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.” Even human rights reports issued by the US State Department have condemned Israel’s “institutional, legal and societal discrimination” against the indigenous Palestinians. For example, see the 2010 report: link to www.state.govrls/hrrpt/2010/nea/154463.htm. Adalah, a leading Palestinian human rights organization in Haifa, lists more than 50 Israeli laws that discriminate against the Palestinian citizens of the state: link to adalah.orgDiscriminatory-Law-Database.

 [5] Almost the entire spectrum in Palestinian civil society has endorsed these three basic rights in the historic call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), issued in July 2005.

 [6] See, for instance, M. Reiner, Lord Samuel, E. Simon, M. Smilansky, Judah Leon Magnes, Palestine–Divided or United? The Case for a Bi-National Palestine before the United Nations, Greenwood Press, (Connecticut: 1983).

 [7] link to unispal.un.orgNSF/0/2752C904A0F4A3E605256817007220DC

 [8] http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9134.shtml

[9] Maath Musleh, Co-Resistance vs. Co-Existence, Maan News, 14 July 2011.

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| Where is a bra considered a weapon? Only in PTSD ziocolony: Israel!

‘The bra is a security threat’: Harassment and interrogation at Ben Gurion airport ~ Anonymous, Mondoweiss.

Anonymous is 21 years old and lives in Berkeley, California. Her father is a Jordanian Palestinian and her mother is a British Jew. The following trip took place in September, 2013.

I took a deep breath and looked around at my surroundings. I mostly kept tabs on the other people who I had been in line with. While most went through the baggage scan machine and straight to their ticket desks, the other members with yellow stickers on their luggage like myself had all been cleared after a 10-15 minute bag check with only one or two of their bags being searched. I was the only person left at the checking tables. The thin bald man in the suit came over once again.

“What do you have in your pockets?” he asked me. “My passport, my visa, and my phone” I told him.

“Fine” he said, “she will escort you to security.” He pointed to the young blonde.

I reached for my bags. “No no. They stay here. You go with her.”

“Who will watch my bags?” I asked him. “They will be here. Go with her.”

The blonde woman and I walked through the airport.

“How old are you?” she asked me. “21” I said, “and you?”

“23” she said.

We stopped before a big white door. She swiped her id card and typed in a code. The door unlocked, to which I entered a white room with a baggage x-ray machine and a white table that looked like a dental chair. Curtains hung in the near right corner. She pointed to that corner with a foam chair and metal legs.

“Sit there” she said. I sat.

A young man appeared, he was in a plaid shirt, jeans and a pair of white Adidas. Undercover police for sure. He lurked on the other side of the curtain that the young blonde partially drew. “Stand with your arms at your sides” she gesticulated. I watched the man’s white sneakers stop on the other side of the curtain, facing towards it. I took my shoes off and my phone was placed in a grey tub. I eyed my passport and visa on the shelf in front of me. She did a general pat down and then pulled my pant waist far from my body and checked around between the gap where my underwear and my belt would have been if I had been wearing one. She sighed and told me that I was finished and should take a seat. Somebody else came through the white door on the other side of the curtain and began laughing with the plain-clothed guard. I could tell by the voice and by her black shoes under the curtain that she was a woman. The young blonde woman left with my shoes and my phone in the grey tub. I eyed my passport again on the ledge in front of me and stuck it into my pocket.

“Are your pockets empty?” Another blonde woman came through the gap in the curtains, the undercover guard moved to the table across from the gap and viewed in. I took my passport out again and held it in my hands. “Yes”.

She had large round eyes and appeared older than the first blonde woman who had checked my bags, maybe she was 26-29. Her hair was wavy and limp against her head. My phone beeped again, probably my family calling me to check on why I had not notified them about my status through the airport as we had agreed.

I guessed at the time. It was perhaps around 6:45. I had been in the private security room for roughly a quarter of an hour. “I am the security supervisor here and I have some questions for you” she told me. She asked me again as to the purpose of my trip, to which I gave the same generic answer of Holy Land sights, friends and family visits.

“Who’d you stay with?” I gave some names. “And the addresses?” I gave one address of a friend in Jerusalem who I’d stayed with for a block of time. She questioned me more on the details of the residents in the flat and how I knew them. She asked me why I’d stayed there and how I could be friends with the people who I mentioned. All had Jewish names.

“We just are” I told her. She stared blankly. “Ok…” she paused.

I said nothing, just looked up at her face. “And who paid for this trip?” she demanded. Her tone was hostile and her body language was on edge as she stood above me and looked down at me in my chair. “My mother.”

“Why?”

“So that I could visit the sights, friends and family” I repeated.

“You are going to London now.”

“Yes I am.”

“Why?”

“To visit family.”

“You are always visiting family” she commented in a teasing tone, the corner of her mouth in a slight snarl, “Why is that?”

“Because I am. Any other questions?” I told her flatly.

“What do you do?”

“What do I do?”

“Yes in the USA or wherever you live what do you do.”

“I work. I recently graduated college.” She asked for the details of what I studied and where I worked. I gave her one-word answers.

“What are your family names?” she again demanded.

“T(Palestinian) and N (Jewish).”

“N(Jewish)?”

“Yes N(Jewish).”

“And your other name is T(Palestinian)?”

“That’s right.”

“Your father was born where?”

“Jordan.”

She repeated my name. “That is my name.” She paused, confused.

“You told another security person that you are Jewish but really you’re just a Palestinian.”

“I am both” I told her.

“What do you mean both?”

“I am Jewish and Palestinian. My mother is Jewish and my father is Palestinian, do you want my family names again?”

The undercover guard was still sitting on the table swinging his legs. His face twisted.

“So if you are both, where is your family in Israel?”

“Jaffa and Tel Aviv” I told her. She was frustrated. “But who…you’re going to England?”

“My mother was born in Britain, why I am going to England and who I will see is not relevant. Do you have any other questions?” I asked her.

This was the first emotional rise that she had gotten from me and, though it was mild, I reminded myself to calm down. I did not want to spend any more energy on this process than I had to. The goal is to end this and go. End this process and go. I reminded myself.

She paused. “Ok, were you told to bring anything onto the plane?”

“I am just bringing myself and my luggage”

“Yes but were you told to bring anything with you?”

“I don’t understand your question”

“Were you told to carry something onto, you know, the plane”

“I still don’t understand your question. I am attempting to board this plane in order to leave Israel and I am hopefully bringing myself and my luggage”

“But there is nobody else?”

“No? I am by myself” She turned around to leave.

“Excuse me, what is your name please?” I asked her. “My name?” The guard smirked.

“Yes your name.”

She and the guard exchanged glances. He sniggered. She laughed. “What do you want my name for?”

“You know my name so I would like to know your name.”

“It’s Hilda.”

“Hilda what?”

“Hilda Ma…” She mumbled the rest. “What was your last name again please?”

“I’ll spell it out for you later if you want. Ok?”

“Yes thank you.” She tossed the curtain aside.

I sat in clear view of the guard who exchanged some words and guffaws with Hilda. He raised his eyebrows at her and pointed at me, his tone of voice said, “can you believe that? Who does she think she is?”

Hilda imitated me and they laughed again. She then disappeared to the other side of the room where I lost visual contact with her. The guard watched her speak with the young blonde woman who then reappeared in the curtained area. She pulled the curtains closer together behind her. The white shoes stood on the other side of the curtain, facing towards it. She motioned for me to rise and hold my hands away from my body.

“Are you going to check me again?” I asked. “Yes” she said.

She scanned me with a metal detector, paying close attention to my chest where my underwire was making the machine beep (which anyone who wears a bra can tell you happens routinely in a check with a handheld metal detector). She lifted up my sweat-pant legs and checked around my calves.

“What’s in your hair?” she said, pointing to my poofy bun on top of my head.

“Nothing, it’s just a hair tie” I said. “Ok can you take it off” she told me.

I took my hair down and she sifted through my curls. “You have a lot of hair” she told me.

I put it back up into a bun and said nothing. Then she left through the gap in the curtains.  The man walked to the gap in the curtain and again turned to face me. I sat down and looked at him. His feet were swinging and his eyes mocked me.

The young blonde came back with the same probe, with a flat head and a cotton pad, that she had used to check my luggage earlier that morning. “Ok stand up again” she told me.
“What is that?” I asked her. She looked shyly at me. “This will um go around your chest and your bottom area”

“My bottom?”

“Your waist and yes like that” she said. “For what purpose?”

“To check and then scan into the machine…it’s just your surfaces” she told me.

I withheld a shudder, feeling the situation slowly slipping out of my control. There was no one else in the room, only the four of us, Hilda, the young blonde, the young undercover guard, and myself. Hilda called the guard over to the right hand side of the room. I watched his white Adidas move back and forth as he rocked on the other side of the curtain. The young blonde stuck the flat-headed probe down my shirt and then around my bra. Then she pulled my sweatpants far away from my body and circled the probe around my waist.

“Can you pull your underwear down a little bit please?” she asked me. This was the first time that she had said please and I could tell that she was embarrassed. I stared at the gap in the curtain and pulled the top of my underwear down. I looked her in the face. Her skin was dewy. The woman swept the probe around my body again and then told me to lift my feet off the floor. She checked my soles. I heard my phone beep twice in its grey bin somewhere on my right by the white “dental” chair next to Hilda and the guard. The young blonde avoided my eye contact and left through the door.

About 30 seconds later, Hilda reappeared and swept open the curtains. The guard reappeared with her and moved to stand on my left by the curtain seam.

“Ok so I need to take off your underwear.”

“Excuse me?”

“Yes the machine signaled a problem with your shirt and underwear so you need to take them off”.

The guard stared me down. His eyes were mocking. “You want me to take off my underwear and then do what with them?”

“We will scan them and then you will need to put other ones on.”

“Other ones? I only have what I have on.” On cue the young blonde rolled in my red suitcase and pulled it into the curtain area.

“What did the machine detect exactly?” I pressed. “I can’t tell you that. You just need to remove your underwear and your shirt.”

“And then you want me to change back into them?”

“No you have to check them in with your luggage and wear something else.”

“But I don’t want to wear anything else. My other clothes are dirty.”

“You have to wear something else. The bra is a security threat.”

“My bra is a security threat?”

“Yes and so is your shirt.”

My mind buzzed as my emotions rose. I looked at the guard and he smirked back at me. “This is your punishment for asking Hilda’s name” I told myself.

The young blonde girl looked at me with my suitcase in hand, a surprisingly distressed look on her face. The expression was guilt. Only later did it strike me that the time between the probe test and Hilda’s decision that my underwear threatened security spanned an average of 30 seconds and that this was, most likely, a time too short to have actually checked the cotton pad on the end of the probe and communicated the next sequence of events between Hilda and the young blonde along with the organized retrieval of my suitcase from the terminal.

I unzipped my bag and popped it open. The inside was a mess from the first rummage through it and I had no idea where anything was. I calmed myself down, took deep breaths, reminded myself that this was all a power play with the intention of making me feel uncomfortable and unfamiliar. I fished out another bra from my bag and took the first shirt that I could find. I went into my underwear pocket but Hilda stopped me. “Why don’t you just wear the ones you have?” she said.

“You told me to change my underwear” I responded.

“No you can leave them. I just want your bra and your shirt” she barked at me.

I folded the two articles over my arm. “Give them to me” Hilda demanded. “I need to scan these before you put them on.” I handed them over to her while the guard watched. She disappeared, I don’t remember what she did. I was busy watching the young blonde woman who looked as uncomfortable as I felt. Hilda handed me my bra and shirt. I stared at the guard. Hilda caught my eye, “you have to change clothes now. No one will see you.” She left and drew the curtains behind her.

For the first time since I entered the airport, I was alone. I watched the guard’s white shoes, pointed towards the curtains. For good measure, I faced the wall and placed my passport in my pocket. I changed my clothes and replaced them with the ones from my bag. I went to my bag to fold them back in when Hilda pulled back the curtains.

“No don’t pack them yet I need to test them!” she barked.

“You already checked them. That’s why we are going through this process, correct?”

“I will check them again.”

I passed them to her right past the guard’s body. He had stepped very close to Hilda and myself. As I passed my clothing to Hilda, he stared down at the bra in my hand and then back up at me. I stood there. I took deep breaths. My eyes dared him to utter a word. He didn’t, he just stared at me.

The young blonde called me back to the other side of the curtains and closed them behind me. My whole body was vibrating with anger. She checked around my body with a metal detector for the second time. The young woman patted down my top yet again. My throat constricted and I could feel angry tears welling up somewhere inside me. I swallowed my feelings. I buried them. I reminded myself of my goal in this very moment and of the stubborn character that my family was so well known for. I made a pact with myself that I would not give them the emotional response they were pressing for. I would not let them compromise my dignity. “Focus” I told myself. “Just focus.”

Hilda brought my shirt and bra back from wherever she had taken them and I packed them into my chaotic suitcase. As Hilda and the guard joked and laughed together, the young blonde approached me. “This is all protocol you know” she whispered at my side.

“Oh really? This is protocol?” I said slowly. I looked her in the eye and she looked down at her feet. I hoped that she was ashamed of this process, ashamed of the actions that had been deemed “appropriate”, realized that she was a pawn in all of this but no less guilty in carrying out the policy of racial and specific group targeting that this whole experience was built upon.

The end of the process was sudden. The whole thing was surreal actually. Hilda left the room in one swift movement. The door slammed behind her. The guard kept tabs on me with the young blonde at my side. I closed my bag and pulled it to standing.

“You can put your shoes on” the young blonde said.

I looked around. “Ok, can I have my shoes please?”

“Oh yeah.” She brought me the grey bin with my phone and shoes and I slipped them on.

The girl pointed me towards the door and we walked through, the plain clothed guard disappeared into the hallway behind us. I did not see him again.

The girl and I walked back together, alone. “You know…” she began “I’ve been working here for 1.5 years and I have never seen them do something like that.”

“Do something like what?” I asked. She looked up at me with a crease in her forehead, “make someone take off their bra…”

“I hope it’s the last time” I told her. She looked ahead into the terminal. We stopped talking.

We reentered the large room that I had first had my bags checked through, the glass doors to the outside of the airport shone with the bright light of the sun. It was now morning. I smiled to myself that I had finished the process. “I get to leave now”, I thought to myself. My eyes adjusted to the light in the terminal where I clearly saw about 6-8 security guards rummaging through the complete contents of both of my carryon bags that now lay limp on the floor. Stuff inside grey bins, outside grey bins, on the conveyor belt, across on other tables; my things were strewn absolutely everywhere. It was chaos.

I appeared before the tables, covered in my things, as the plastic gloved hands continued the sifting process. Everything was separated and individually run through the little metal detector behind me.

A stern, balding, reddish haired man with a black kippah stood there with an earpiece on one side. His arms were crossed and by the way that the skinny bald man stood next to him and all the guards checked in with his appraising gaze, I could tell that he was the boss of this particular operation. Hilda had disappeared completely. She was nowhere in sight. I said nothing about the bags. I just breathed. “Excuse me”, I called to the skinny bald man, “What was the woman’s name who checked me in the security room?”

The man looked at me, “You mean Hilda?”

“Yes Hilda” I responded.

The man with the kippah turned his glance towards me. “What is her full name?” I asked.

The bald man opened his mouth to answer but first turned his attention to his superior. “We don’t give last names” the man with the kippah asserted. “I doubt that”, I thought to myself.

“Ok what is her title then please?”

“Hilda, Security Supervisor.” A woman with a clipboard appeared between us and asked the skinny man who I was. He pointed to my name on a short list, which she then highlighted in yellow and pink. The skinny man looked at me, “You will make your flight.”

…
A young woman beckoned me to her box, I’m next. She opened my passport and stared down at the page. She stutters my first name. “Yes?”

“Ra…Ra…” I pronounce the rest of it for her. “What was the purpose of your visit?” I let out the same monotonous answer I had uttered all morning.

“You have friends and family here?” she asked. “Yes.”

“Ok where are they?”

“Tel Aviv and Jaffa” I said. She paused and cocked her eyebrows. “That’s the same place.”

“No no, I said Tel Aviv and Jaffa” I told her, thinking she had not heard me correctly. “Yes that’s the same place.” What she was implying hit me.

All morning I had been mistreated, combed out of the crowd and profiled, my time wasted and my dignity subsequently stepped all over without a second thought. I had been treated like a criminal for having an identity that I was born into, told explicitly in each of these actions that I did not belong here and had no place here at all as a person with Palestinian heritage. Harassed and picked out from the rest because of my name, my history, the assumptions that go with them, and my very intention to visit my family, many of who cannot visit me in the USA.

Here I was being told by a girl in uniform, very close to my age, that my town had no existence in the present, even as I had just left from it hours before arriving at the airport. The whole morning’s exchange culminated at this moment as a burning ember in my stomach. It was emblematic of the constant reminder that we Palestinians are being systematically forgotten and erased from public consciousness in every sphere of life, delegitimizing every root that we are attached to inside and outside of the Israeli state.

Tel Aviv, some of it built on two prominent neighborhoods of my town, much of the rest built upon the orange groves that sustained it, was swallowing up my very presence, right there in the middle of the airport. I realized that, to this girl I was already a disappeared part of “history”, excluded from her general consciousness, not even present in her own imagination of the past.

Yet here she was, looking right at me. I wanted to show her, to figuratively reach behind her glass case, that I was not a shadow of the things that were but a glimmer of the present and future of what is and what can be.

“They are not the same place” I tell her “One is north and one is south. One is a city and one is a town.”

“No, you were in one place. The name of the city is Tel Aviv – Yafo. Not Yafo. Same place.” She handed me back my passport and stared at me, annoyed.

“It is not the same place” I told her. “Is that all?”

“Yeah. Go.”

…

I hurried to my gate, through the final check and into the airport lounge area. I decided that the plane would not leave without me, from the beginning the airline had been notified about my ensured tardiness. I stopped at a candy and snack store on my way to the gate and chose a bottle of water. I brought it up to the woman at the desk. “Passport and boarding ticket please” she told me. I handed both to her. She looked me up in the computer in front of her. Her eyes fixed on me. “How long have you been in Israel and what is your final destination?” I was incredulous. I was being asked security questions by a candy vendor.

“Excuse me, I’ve already passed through security. How much are those tic-tacs please?” I grabbed the box next to me. She told me the total and I paid. She asked no more questions. I took my boarding materials from the counter. As I turned around, I noticed two plain clothed men with shaved heads watching me from their seats at the fountain. They had no baggage. I guessed who they were. I moved past them and walked briskly to my gate. I kiss the necklace around my neck as an act of gratitude and I know that I will be back. I also know that it will not be easy. It never is.

…

I hope that one day this story becomes a fairy tale of what was once the Occupation, in all of its arbitrary character and continual perpetuation of inequality, injustice, and illusion. For now, this experience as described above is just a minor example of the humiliation and daily challenges that Palestinians face on a regular basis when trying to cross checkpoints inside and outside of the West Bank and Gaza. It is just a minor example of the racial profiling that Palestinians with Israeli passports or Jerusalem ID cards go through on a regular basis when walking down the street or applying for a job. It is just a minor example of how the Occupation divides the Palestinian population into all of our different “statuses” and privileges while combining us all together into one essentializing package. It is an example of a situation where the oppression of certain groups of people has been completely normalized by the international community.

If we can start anywhere in deconstructing this Occupation, literally taking it apart, we can start by educating ourselves and our communities. I implore those who read this to learn about the history of Palestine, to learn about recent events on the ground, to talk to as many people as they can, to be curious and ask questions, to look at displays of military power and question the motives of those governments who support them.

Throughout all of this, please remember, that this is not a historical issue, it is a human one.

Peace, Justice and Dignity.

________________________________________________________________________

Related articles

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| Squatters from hell: Nearly half of Jewish Israelis support discrimination against non-Jews!

Nearly half of Jewish Israelis support discrimination against non-Jews ~ Ma’an News Agency.

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — A majority of Israeli Jews support the notion of Israel as a Jewish state, a new survey published Sunday said.

The Guttman Center for Surveys of the Israel Democracy Institute published an extensive survey on public opinion in Israel. Among the findings, the report said that 74.8 percent of Jews in Israel believe the state “can be both Jewish and democratic.”

A third of Palestinians in Israel share this view, according to the survey.

Around 32 percent of Jews think the Jewish nature of Israel’s state is more important, while 37 percent prefer the combination of Jewish and democratic.

Nearly 48 percent of Jewish Israelis believe Jewish citizens should have more rights than non-Jewish citizens, while in the overall sample 68 percent of respondents view the rift between Jews and Palestinians as the greatest source of friction in Israeli society, the survey said.

Around 43 percent of Israeli Jews support government policies to encourage Palestinians to emigrate from Israel, according to the study.

Although this number was slightly down from past years, it suggests support for policies of transfer of Palestinians from Israel, as right-wing parties have previously proposed.

Over 47 percent of Israeli Jews expressed an aversion to having a Palestinian family as neighbors, second only to foreign workers at 56.9 percent. Foreign workers in Israel are primarily of African and East Asian descent, and their presence has been a target of large protests in Israel in recent years.

Only 28 percent of Palestinian-Israelis feel a sense of belonging to the Israeli state.

Sixty-one percent of both Jewish and Palestinian Israelis feel that they have “little or no ability to influence government decisions.”

More than 760,000 Palestinians — estimated today to number 4.8 million including their descendants — were forced into exile or driven out of their homes in the conflict surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.

Around 160,000 Palestinians were able to remain inside what became Israel in 1948. They now number around 1.36 million people along with their descendants, or about 20 percent of the country’s population.

The survey did not include the 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, which has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967, nor did it include the 1.7 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, who have been under an Israeli military blockade since 2007 and are considered to be occupied by Israel according to the United Nations, as Israel controls the Gaza Strip’s airspace, territorial waters and movement of people and goods.

________________________________________________________________________

 

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| Israeli Occupation: If this isn’t apartheid, then what is it?

If this isn’t apartheid, then what is it? ~ Ran Greenstein, +972 Magazine.

We do not need to find identical practices to those prevailing in pre-1994 South Africa in order to determine whether apartheid exists elsewhere.

For a few years now, opinion pieces and articles in the South African and Israeli press have shown confusion regarding the meaning of the comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa. How can we sort out the conceptual mess that afflicts the debates around the issue?

First, let us examine the meaning of apartheid. The term defines the race-based regime of political domination and social marginalisation that ruled South Africa from 1948 to 1994. Alongside this meaning, another definition emerged in international law, drawing on the South African example but gradually moving away from it. With the demise of the apartheid regime in 1994, its legal meaning took a decisive step away from South African realities. The 2002 Statute of the International Criminal Court contains no references to South Africa and regards apartheid as “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group.” We must also bear in mind that the 1965 International Convention on eliminating racial discrimination extends the term to cover “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin.” In other words, it is not restricted to ‘race’ in the common meaning that invokes real or imaginary biological differences in its definition.

 

While apartheid remains associated in our minds with its South African origins, legally it has no necessary relation to South Africa. We do not need to find identical practices to those prevailing in pre-1994 South Africa in order to determine whether apartheid exists elsewhere. The key question is the identification of a regime that practices systematic oppression and domination by one group over another. How then does it apply to Israel?

To answer that, we need to clarify another concept: Israel. While usually seen as residing within its pre-1967 boundaries, the Israeli regime exercises control over Palestinians in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. For the last 46 years, all residents within Greater Israel have lived under the same regime, which claims to be the sole legitimate political and military authority. The state controls the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, ruling over 8 million rights-bearing citizens (75 percent of whom are Jews) and 4 million Palestinian subjects denied civil and political rights. To complete the picture, millions of Palestinian refugees (who were born in the territory or their direct ancestors were) cannot set foot in their homeland, let alone determine its political future as citizens.

How is the notion of apartheid relevant to this reality?

The Israeli regime is based on an ethnic/religious distinction between Jewish insiders and Palestinian outsiders. It expands citizenship beyond its territory, potentially to all Jews regardless of their links to the country, and contracts citizenship within it: Palestinians in the occupied territories and refugees outside have no citizenship and cannot become Israeli citizens.

The regime combines different modes of rule: civilian authority with democratic institutions within the Green Line (pre-67 boundaries), and military authority beyond it. In times of crisis, the military mode of rule spills over the Line to apply to Palestinian citizens in Israel. At all times, the civilian mode of rule spills over the Line to apply to Jewish settlers. The distinction between the two sides of the Line is constantly eroding as a result, and norms and practices developed under the occupation filter back into Israel. Israel as a ‘Jewish democratic state’ is ‘democratic’ for Jews and ‘Jewish’ for Arabs.

It is in fact a ‘Jewish demographic state.’ Demography – the fear that Jews may become a minority – is the prime concern behind state policies. All state institutions and practices are geared to meet the concern for a permanent Jewish majority exercising absolute political domination.

These conditions are particularly visible in the occupied territories: Jewish settlers live in exclusive communities, from which all Palestinian locals are barred (except, occasionally, as ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’). They drive on Israeli-only roads, enjoy Israeli military protection and access to all the privileges and and services that come with citizenship rights, including voting for the Israeli parliament. Palestinian subjects are denied access to any of the above, and have no say in the way they are governed. ‘No taxation without representation’ is a noble political principle that does not apply to them, only to Israeli settlers.

How should we call a regime that leaves millions of its subjects with no political rights, that practices segregation in all walks of life and that denies them the basic right to determine their future? True, there is a Palestinian Authority as well, but it has no power over crucial issues of security, land, water, movement of people and goods, industry and trade. All that matters is controlled by Israeli military authorities, which operate on behalf and at the behest of settlers and Israeli interest groups. That the territories have not been formally annexed to Israel is irrelevant – it changes none of the oppressive practices to which Palestinians are daily subjected.

Some people prefer not to term this regime apartheid because it is indeed different (not better) in some respects from what existed in South Africa before 1994. Fair enough, but what better term is there?

Ran Greenstein is an Israeli-born associate professor in the sociology department at the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Related:
Echoes of South Africa’s ‘District Six’ in the Negev
Tzipi Livni joins the ‘Israel apartheid’ club
When ‘apartheid’ seems to be the hardest word 

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| Zionist Apartheid: a Crime Against Humanity!

Zionist Apartheid: a Crime Against Humanity ~ Amjad Alqasis, BADIL Resource Center, The Clockwork of Ongoing Nakba: Unraveling Forced Population Transfer (Summer 2013).

Israeli Annexation Wall near ‘Aida Refugee Camp – Bethlehem, October 2012 (© Richard Wainwright)

In 1973, the United Nations rightly condemned “the unholy alliance between Portuguese colonialism, South African racism, Zionism and Israeli imperialism.” Only two years later, it determined “that Zionism is a form of racismand racial discrimination.” At the behest of the U.S. administration, this resolution was revoked in 1991 in order to pave the way for the Madrid Peace Conference that same year; however, equating of Zionism with racism is still valid.

Apartheid is based on the establishment and maintenance of a regime of institutionalized discrimination in which one group dominates others. In the case of Israel, Zionist ideology is the driving force behind the ongoing Palestinian reality of apartheid. Not limited to the occupied Palestinian territory, the Israeli regime also targets Palestinians residing on the Israeli side of the 1949 Armistice Line (known as the Green Line) and millions of Palestinian refugees living in forced exile while promoting Jewish-Israeli colonization to the expropriated land. As such, the Palestinians, wherever they reside, are collectively exposed to one coherent structure of Zionist apartheid. That structure discriminates against Palestinians in areas such as nationality, citizenship, denial of reparation (return, restitution and compensation), residency rights, and land ownership. This system originated in 1948 in order to dominate and dispossess all forcibly displaced Palestinians, including the 150,000 who were able to remain within the “Green Line” and who became Palestinian citizens of Israel. The occupation of the remaining part of Palestine by Israeli forces in 1967 subjected the Palestinians living within that territory to the same Zionist apartheid regime.

The findings of the South African session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine concluded that Israel’s practices against the Palestinian people constitute the crime of apartheid within all of Palestine (also referred to as Mandate or historic Palestine). However, the Zionist Movement—and later Israel—had no interest in creating a system of apartheid in order to simply construct and maintain the domination of one “racial” group over another. Israel neither aimed to exploit the indigenous Palestinians for labor nor limit their political and social participation. Rather, its intention has always been to establish a homogeneous Zionist state exclusively for Jewish people. This has been apparent since the early years of the Zionist Movement and is further illustrated by the fact that Israel has hitherto no defined borders. Israel’s former Prime Minister Golda Meir explained that “the borders are determined by where Jews live, not where there is a line on a map.”This statement, in combination with David Ben-Gurion’s writings in 1937, in which he stated that “the compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the projected Jewish state could give us something which we never had,”^[1] offers broad guidelines for transferring Palestinians out and implanting Jewish settlers into the territory.

The creation of a Jewish nation state in a land with a small Jewish minority could only be achieved by forcibly displacing the indigenous population and implanting Jewish colonizers from abroad. Accordingly, Zionist apartheid’s main manifestation is forced population transfer.

Forced population transfer has been defined as a practice or policy that has the purpose or effect of moving persons into or out of an area—either within or across an international border:

Transfer can be carried out en masse, or as “low-intensity transfers” affecting a population gradually or incrementally.

Forced population transfer is illegal and has constituted an international crime since the Allied Resolution on German War Crimes, adopted in 1942. The strongest and most recent codification of the crime is in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which clearly defines the forcible transfer of population and implantation of settlers as war crimes.

The intention on “transfer” in Zionist thought was encapsulated in 1905 by the words of Israel Zangwill, one of the early Zionist thinkers, who stated that “if we wish to give a country to a people without a country, it is utter foolishness to allow it to be the country of two peoples.”^[2]

Already 66% of Palestinians worldwide have been displaced by Israel’s ongoing forcible displacement of the Palestinian people.Today, this population transfer is carried out by Israel in the form of its overall policy of “silent” transfer—not by mass deportations like in 1948 or 1967. This displacement is silent in the sense that Israel carries it out while trying to avoid international attention by displacing small numbers of people on a weekly basis. It is thus distinguishable from the more overt transfers achieved under the pretense of warfare in 1948 or 1967.

Population transfer is achieved by creating an overall untenable living situation that leaves no choice for the inhabitants other than to leave their homes. Moshe Sharett—one of the signatories of Israel’s Declaration of Independence—indicated the desire to foster onerous living conditions when he stated “a policy based on minimal fairness should be adopted toward Arabs who were not inclined to leave.”^[3] Therefore, Israel’s apartheid system is a means to an end and not an end-goal in itself because it does not simply seek to dominate the indigenous Palestinians, but to forcibly displace them.

South Africa, on the other hand, not only invented the apartheid system, but was also proud of its creation and publicly advocated for it. The word “apartheid” itself is Afrikaans for “separateness” and became the official government policy of racial segregation in 1948. The South African apartheid structure was based on a clear-cut separation and segregation policy.^[4] It was clear from the outset that the purpose of South Africa’s apartheid system was to create a permanent apartheid structure in order to preserve the established status quo. For instance, South Africa designed the 1970 Bantu Homelands Citizens Act to react and adapt to increasing criticism from the international community. This law established separate legal entities (Bantustans) and denaturalized the black population so the South African government could argue that the black population was no longer excluded from state affairs because by law they no longer belonged to the South African state. This attempt aimed at continuing the exploitation of the indigenous workforce and resources, thus fortifying the existing system while at the same time discarding its racist, anti-democratic image.

The international crime of apartheid and the  subsequent Apartheid Convention was modeled on, but not limited to, the South African apartheid system. JohnDugard wrote that “The Apartheid Convention was the ultimate step in the condemnation of apartheid as it not only declared that apartheid was unlawful because it violated the Charter of the United Nations, but in addition it declared apartheid to be criminal.”Today, Israel is guilty of committing various crimes in order to forcibly displace the Palestinian people from Palestine. Israel’s crimes such as apartheid and persecution, as well as its permanent occupation and annexation-colonization, are intended to create an unbearable situation in order to expel the indigenous Palestinian population. This continuous and calculated targeting of the Palestinian people must be challenged by the international community as it was regarding South Africa where that state’s actions and policies were codified into elements of an international crime against humanity. Israel’s regime must be judged accordingly and its impunity must be brought to an end because silence—if not complicity—in the face of fundamental rights violations further entrenches politics to the detriment of law. The first significant step in that direction would be reinstating United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 of 10 November 1975, declaring Zionism as a form of racism, and paving the way for the end of Israeli impunity and Zionist apartheid.

---

[1] Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: the concept of “transfer” in Zionist political thought, 1882-1948 (Institute for Palestine Studies 1992), p. 210.

[2] Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of “Transfer”in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948(Institute for Palestine Studies 1992), p. 10.

[3] Nur Masalha, A Land without a People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians 1949-96 (Faber and Farber Limited 1997), p. 3.

[4] See H. Booysen, “Convention on the Crime of Apartheid”, South African Yearbook of International Law, vol. 2 (1976), p. 56; R.S. Clark, “The Crime of Apartheid” in International Criminal Law (ed. M.C. Bassiouni) vol. 1 (Crimes), Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. (Transnational Press 1986), p. 299.

Published in The Clockwork of Ongoing Nakba: Unraveling Forced Population Transfer (Summer 2013)

Latest from Amjad Alqasis

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| Message to Richard Dawkins: ‘Islam is not a race’ is a cop out!

Message to Richard Dawkins: ‘Islam is not a race’ is a cop out ~

• Nesrine Malik, theguardian.com.

A focus on the academic distinction between religion and race is often used as a fig leaf for prejudice and outright bigotry.

‘[Richard] Dawkins himself dedicated a large part of his riposte to a dissection of whether race is a biological or social construct.’ Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Of late, a new variation of the old chestnut “I’m not racist but …” has emerged. It goes: “I’ve got nothing against Muslims, it’s Islam I hate”. Otherwise known as the “Islam is not a race” argument.

After I wrote about Richard Dawkins’s snide attack on the supposed dearth of Muslim scientific and cultural achievement, some critics hit back along these lines. It is acceptable to criticise and belittle Islam because it is a religion, not an ethnic grouping – and therefore fair game.

Technically, they are right – Islam is not a race. But too often, those who deploy the argument, are borrowing from the Bill Clinton school of sophistry: “I did not have racist relations with that religion”.

Dawkins himself dedicated a large part of his riposte to a dissection of whether race is a biological or social construct. The argument over Islam and race was a “simple semantic disagreement”, he said, before proceeding to define race according to the dictionary.

So what does the dictionary say? Racism, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior”. But what does this mean in practice?

Under British law, Jewish people are classified as belonging to a race (something that Dawkins, incidentally, disagrees with) since they are deemed to have a shared culture and history that goes beyond the religious sphere. Do I share history, culture and other reference points with Muslims around the world that go beyond the practice of Islam? Definitely. But it is a loose, secular feeling.

Does this make me immune to discrimination that Muslims face? Certainly not, given the long hours I have spent in immigration queues, undergoing extended background checks and visa processing times. So clearly, in that sense, Islam is not a race, but Muslims are. It’s entirely legitimate to question and interrogate Islam as a religion. It is not fair to do so against Muslims based on their religious or cultural identity.

Equally, it is disingenuous to claim that Islam has no colour. There is actually quite a strong racial dimension to Islamophobia. Muslims in the UK are predominantly brown, Asian or Arab, and there have been instances where non-Muslims from Asian communities have been lumped together with Muslims and discriminated against.

After the 9/11 attacks, some bearded and turbaned Sikh men found themselves coming under hostile scrutiny. Following the more recent Boston bombings, some media outlets described suspects as being of “Muslim appearance” – whatever that is. In the wake of Theo Van Gogh murder, racist targeting of Muslim immigrants increased.

When discrimination against some eastern Europeans in the UK is called racism, you don’t hear cries of “Polish is not a race” to justify plain prejudice. The fixation on terminology and not the reality suggests a society that does not want to come to terms with the creeping ugliness of hatred. The likes of the BNP and EDL lack even a basic grasp of the rudiments of Islam, let alone an ability to parse religion and race.

Racism is behaviour, not an informed academic position. I doubt that anyone abusing Muslims in the street, or defacing a mosque, or snatching a veil off a woman’s face, has paused to examine their premise beforehand. The argument that Islam is not a race is a cop out. It’s time that we dispensed with it once and for all, because it prevents us from identifying acts motivated by hatred for what they really are. Islam might not be a race, but using that as a fig leaf for your unthinking prejudice is almost certainly racist.

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| ‘Jews a Race’ Genetic Theory comes under fierce attack by DNA Expert!

‘Jews a Race’ Genetic Theory Comes Under Fierce Attack by DNA Expert ~ Rita Rubin, Forward Association.

Israeli Scientist Challenges Hypothesis of Middle East Origins

RITA RUBIN

Science Feud: Johns Hopkins geneticist Eran Elhaik says his research debunks the long-held theory that Jews are a single race.

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Scientists usually don’t call each other “liars” and “frauds.”

But that’s how Johns Hopkins University post-doctoral researcher Eran Elhaik describes a group of widely respected geneticists, including Harry Ostrer, professor of pathology and genetics at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine and author of the 2012 book “Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People.”

For years now, the findings of Ostrer and several other scientists have stood virtually unchallenged on the genetics of Jews and the story they tell of the common Middle East origins shared by many Jewish populations worldwide. Jews — and Ashkenazim in particular — are indeed one people, Ostrer’s research finds.

It’s a theory that more or less affirms the understanding that many Jews themselves hold of who they are in the world: a people who, though scattered, share an ethnic-racial bond rooted in their common ancestral descent from the indigenous Jews of ancient Judea or Palestine, as the Romans called it after they conquered the Jewish homeland.

But now, Elhaik, an Israeli molecular geneticist, has published research that he says debunks this claim. And that has set off a predictable clash.

“He’s just wrong,” said Marcus Feldman of Stanford University, a leading researcher in Jewish genetics, referring to Elhaik.

The sometimes strong emotions generated by this scientific dispute stem from a politically loaded question that scientists and others have pondered for decades: Where in the world did Ashkenazi Jews come from?

The debate touches upon such sensitive issues as whether the Jewish people is a race or a religion, and whether Jews or Palestinians are descended from the original inhabitants of what is now the State of Israel.

Ostrer’s theory is sometimes marshaled to lend the authority of science to the Zionist narrative, which views the migration of modern-day Jews to what is now Israel, and their rule over that land, as a simple act of repossession by the descendants of the land’s original residents. Ostrer declined to be interviewed for this story. But in his writings, Ostrer points out the dangers of such reductionism; some of the same genetic markers common among Jews, he finds, can be found in Palestinians, as well.

By using sophisticated molecular tools, Feldman, Ostrer and most other scientists in the field have found that Jews are genetically homogeneous. No matter where they live, these scientists say, Jews are genetically more similar to each other than to their non-Jewish neighbors, and they have a shared Middle Eastern ancestry.

The geneticists’ research backs up what is known as the Rhineland Hypothesis. According to the hypothesis, Ashkenazi Jews descended from Jews who fled Palestine after the Muslim conquest in the seventh century and settled in Southern Europe. In the late Middle Ages they moved into eastern Europe from Germany, or the Rhineland.

“Nonsense,” said Elhaik, a 33-year-old Israeli Jew from Beersheba who earned a doctorate in molecular evolution from the University of Houston. The son of an Italian man and Iranian woman who met in Israel, Elhaik, a dark-haired, compact man, sat down recently for an interview in his bare, narrow cubicle of an office at Hopkins, where he’s worked for four years.

In “The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses,” published in December in the online journal Genome Biology and Evolution, Elhaik says he has proved that Ashkenazi Jews’ roots lie in the Caucasus — a region at the border of Europe and Asia that lies between the Black and Caspian seas — not in the Middle East. They are descendants, he argues, of the Khazars, a Turkic people who lived in one of the largest medieval states in Eurasia and then migrated to Eastern Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. Ashkenazi genes, Elhaik added, are far more heterogeneous than Ostrer and other proponents of the Rhineland Hypothesis believe. Elhaik did find a Middle Eastern genetic marker in DNA from Jews, but, he says, it could be from Iran, not ancient Judea.

Elhaik writes that the Khazars converted to Judaism in the eighth century, although many historians believe that only royalty and some members of the aristocracy converted. But widespread conversion by the Khazars is the only way to explain the ballooning of the European Jewish population to 8 million at the beginning of the 20th century from its tiny base in the Middle Ages, Elhaik says.

Elhaik bases his conclusion on an analysis of genetic data published by a team of researchers led by Doron Behar, a population geneticist and senior physician at Israel’s Rambam Medical Center, in Haifa. Using the same data, Behar’s team published in 2010 a paper concluding that most contemporary Jews around the world and some non-Jewish populations from the Levant, or Eastern Mediterranean, are closely related.

Elhaik used some of the same statistical tests as Behar and others, but he chose different comparisons. Elhaik compared “genetic signatures” found in Jewish populations with those of modern-day Armenians and Georgians, which he uses as a stand-in for the long-extinct Khazarians because they live in the same area as the medieval state.

“It’s an unrealistic premise,” said University of Arizona geneticist Michael Hammer, one of Behar’s co-authors, of Elhaik’s paper. Hammer notes that Armenians have Middle Eastern roots, which, he says, is why they appeared to be genetically related to Ashkenazi Jews in Elhaik’s study.

Hammer, who also co-wrote the first paper that showed modern-day Kohanim are descended from a single male ancestor, calls Elhaik and other Khazarian Hypothesis proponents “outlier folks… who have a minority view that’s not supported scientifically. I think the arguments they make are pretty weak and stretching what we know.”

Feldman, director of Stanford’s Morrison Institute for Population and Resource Studies, echoes Hammer. “If you take all of the careful genetic population analysis that has been done over the last 15 years… there’s no doubt about the common Middle Eastern origin,” he said. He added that Elhaik’s paper “is sort of a one-off.”

Elhaik’s statistical analysis would not pass muster with most contemporary scholars, Feldman said: “He appears to be applying the statistics in a way that gives him different results from what everybody else has obtained from essentially similar data.”

Elhaik, who doesn’t believe that Moses, Aaron or the 12 Tribes of Israel ever existed, shrugs off such criticism.

“That’s a circular argument,” he said of the notion that Jews’ and Armenians’ genetic similarities stem from common ancestors in the Middle East and not from Khazaria, the area where the Armenians live. If you believe that, he says, then other non-Jewish populations, such as Georgian, that are genetically similar to Armenians should be considered genetically related to Jews, too, “and so on and so forth.”

Dan Graur, Elhaik’s doctoral supervisor at U.H. and a member of the editorial board of the journal that published his paper, calls his former student “very ambitious, very independent. That’s what I like.” Graur, a Romanian-born Jew who served on the faculty of Tel Aviv University for 22 years before moving 10 years ago to the Houston school, said Elhaik “writes more provocatively than may be needed, but it’s his style.” Graur calls Elhaik’s conclusion that Ashkenazi Jews originated to the east of Germany “a very honest estimate.”

In a news article that accompanied Elhaik’s journal paper, Shlomo Sand, history professor at Tel Aviv University and author of the controversial 2009 book “The Invention of the Jewish People,” said the study vindicated his long-held ideas.

”It’s so obvious for me,” Sand told the journal. “Some people, historians and even scientists, turn a blind eye to the truth. Once, to say Jews were a race was anti-Semitic, now to say they’re not a race is anti-Semitic. It’s crazy how history plays with us.”

The paper has received little coverage in mainstream American media, but it has attracted the attention of anti-Zionists and “anti-Semitic white supremacists,” Elhaik said.

Interestingly, while anti-Zionist bloggers have applauded Elhaik’s work, saying it proves that contemporary Jews have no legitimate claim to Israel, some white supremacists have attacked it.

David Duke, for example, is disturbed by the assertion that Jews are not a race. “The disruptive and conflict-ridden behavior which has marked out Jewish Supremacist activities through the millennia strongly suggests that Jews have remained more or less genetically uniform and have… developed a group evolutionary survival strategy based on a common biological unity — something which strongly militates against the Khazar theory,” wrote the former Ku Klux Klansman and former Louisiana state assemblyman on his blog in February.

“I’m not communicating with them,” Elhaik said of the white supremacists. He says it also bothers him, a veteran of seven years in the Israeli army, that anti-Zionists have capitalized on his research; not least because “they’re not going to be proven wrong anytime soon.”

But proponents of the Rhineland Hypothesis also have a political agenda, he said, claiming they “were motivated to justify the Zionist narrative.”

To illustrate his point, Elhaik swivels his chair around to face his computer and calls up a 2010 email exchange with Ostrer.

“It was a great pleasure reading your group’s recent paper, ‘Abraham’s Children in the Genome Era,’ that illuminate[s] the history of our people,” Elhaik wrote to Ostrer. “Is it possible to see the data used for the study?”

Ostrer replied that the data are not publicly available. “It is possible to collaborate with the team by writing a brief proposal that outlines what you plan to do,” he wrote. “Criteria for reviewing include novelty and strength of the proposal, non-overlap with current or planned activities, and non-defamatory nature toward the Jewish people.” That last requirement, Elhaik argues, reveals the bias of Ostrer and his collaborators.

Allowing scientists access to data only if their research will not defame Jews is “peculiar,” said Catherine DeAngelis, who edited the Journal of the American Medical Association for a decade. “What he does is set himself up for criticism: Wait a minute. What’s this guy trying to hide?”

Despite what his critics claim, Elhaik says, he was not out to prove that contemporary Jews have no connection to the Jewish people of the Bible. His primary research focus is the genetics of mental illness, which, he explains, led him to question the assumption that Ashkenazi Jews are a useful population to study because they’re so homogeneous.

Elhaik says he first read about the Khazarian Hypothesis a decade ago in a 1976 book by the late Hungarian-British author Arthur Koestler, “The Thirteenth Tribe,” written before scientists had the tools to compare genomes. Koestler, who was Jewish by birth, said his aim in writing the book was to eliminate the racist underpinnings of anti-Semitism in Europe. “Should this theory be confirmed, the term ‘anti-Semitism’ would become void of meaning,” the book jacket reads. Although Koestler’s book was generally well reviewed, some skeptics questioned the author’s grasp of the history of Khazaria.

Graur is not surprised that Elhaik has stood up against the “clique” of scientists who believe that Jews are genetically homogeneous. “He enjoys being combative,” Graur said. “That’s what science is.”

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| Israeli ambassador calls Al-Sisi a “national hero for all Jews!”

Israeli ambassador calls Al-Sisi a “national hero for all Jews”  ~ MEMO. 

Abdul-Fattah Al-Sisi a “national hero”.

The Israeli ambassador in Cairo has told a minister in the interim government that the people of Israel look upon General Abdul-Fattah Al-Sisi as a “national hero”. According to Israel Radio, the ambassador rang Agriculture Minister Ayman Abu-Hadid to congratulate him on his new post and said, “Al-Sisi is not a national hero for Egypt, but for all Jews in Israel and around the globe.”

 

Israel is looking forward to the launch of new relationships with Egypt, said Yaakov Amitai, as well as joint efforts in the war on terror. His mention of “terror” is understood to be an oblique reference to President Mohamed Morsi’s supporters protesting against the coup which removed him from office.

The two men agreed on the resumption of the work of the Supreme Egyptian-Israeli Agricultural Committee. Meetings of the committee are held alternately in Cairo and Tel Aviv every six months. They also agreed to reactivate the Egyptian branch of the Future Leaders Network, which includes Egyptian, Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli youths.

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